Dzhandzhugazova E.A.
…Unconditional sincerity and maximum perfection
Vera Mukhina is the only female sculptor in the history of Russian monumental art, an outstanding master with an ideal sense of harmony, honed skill and an amazingly subtle sense of space. Mukhina’s talent is truly multifaceted; she has mastered almost all genres of plastic art, from the grandiose monumental sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” to miniature decorative statues and sculptural groups, sketches for theatrical productions and art glass.
“The first lady of Soviet sculpture” combined in her work the seemingly incompatible principles - the “male” and “feminine” principles! Dizzying scale, power, expression, pressure and extraordinary plasticity of figures, combined with the precision of silhouettes, emphasized by the soft flexibility of lines, giving unusually expressive statics and dynamics of sculptural compositions.
Vera Mukhina's talent grew and strengthened during the difficult and controversial years of the twentieth century. Her work is sincere and therefore perfect, main job her life - the monument “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” challenged the Nazi ideology of racism and hatred, becoming a true symbol of Russian-Soviet art, which has always personified the ideas of peace and goodness. As a sculptor, Mukhina chose the most difficult path of a monumentalist, working on a par with the venerable male masters I. Shadr, M. Manizer, B. Iofan, V. Andreev, she never changed the vector of her creative development under the influence of recognized authorities.
The civic spirit of art, which builds a bridge from ideal to life, uniting truth and beauty, became the conscious program of all her thoughts until the very end of her life. Creative success and the exceptional achievements of this wonderful woman were largely determined by her personal fate, which had, perhaps, everything...
And great love, family happiness and family tragedy, the joy of creativity and hard, exhausting work, triumphant victories and a long period of semi-oblivion...
Pages of life
Vera Ignatievna Mukhina was born in Latvia into a Russian merchant family on July 1, 1889. The Mukhin family was distinguished not only by its merchant acumen, but also by its love of art. Handling a lot of money, they hardly talked about it, but they argued fiercely about theater, music, painting and sculpture. They patronized the arts and generously encouraged young talents. So Ignatiy Kuzmich Mukhin, Vera’s father, who was almost bankrupt himself, bought seascape from the artist Alisov, who was dying of consumption. In general, he did good a lot and quietly, like his father - Vera’s grandfather, Kuzma Ignatievich, who really wanted to be like Cosimo de’ Medici.1
Unfortunately, Vera Mukhina's parents died early and she and her older sister were left in the care of wealthy relatives. So, from 1903, the Mukhina sisters began to live with their uncle in Kursk and Moscow. Vera was an excellent student, played the piano, painted, wrote poetry, traveled around Europe, was a great fashionista and loved balls. But somewhere deep in her mind a persistent thought about sculpture had already arisen, and studying abroad became her dream. However, the relatives did not even want to hear about this. It’s not a woman’s business, the practical merchants reasoned, for a young girl to study far from her family from some Bourdelle.2
However, fate decreed otherwise... while spending the Christmas holidays with relatives on the Smolensk estate, Vera suffered a severe facial injury while riding down a hill. Pain, fear, dozens of operations instantly turned the cheerful young lady into a twitched and grief-stricken creature. And only then did the family decide to send Vera to Paris for treatment and rest. French surgeons performed several operations and actually restored the girl’s face, but it became completely different. The new face of Vera Mukhina was large, rude and very strong-willed, which was reflected in her character and hobbies. Vera decided to forget about balls, flirting and marriage. Who would love this? And the question of choosing an activity between painting and sculpture was decided in favor of the second. Vera began studying in Bourdelle's workshop, working like a convict, she very quickly overtook everyone, becoming the best. The tragic turn of fate forever determined her life path and her entire life. creative program. It’s hard to say whether a spoiled merchant’s daughter could turn into an extraordinary woman - great master monumental sculpture, even if the word “sculptor” is meant only in the masculine gender.
However, ahead was the 20th century - the century of amazing speeds and the industrial revolution, a heroic and cruel era that placed a woman next to a man everywhere: at the controls of an airplane, on the captain's bridge of a ship, in the cabin of a high-rise crane or tractor. Having become equal, but not the same, men and women in the twentieth century continued their painful search for harmony in the new industrial reality. And it was precisely this ideal of searching for the harmony of “masculine” and “feminine” principles that Vera Mukhina created in her work. Her masculine face gave her creativity extraordinary strength, courage and power, and her feminine heart gave soft plasticity, filigree precision and selfless love.
In love and motherhood, Vera Ignatievna, despite everything, was very happy and, despite the serious illness of her son and difficult fate husband - the famous Moscow doctor Alexei Zamkov, her women's destiny was stormy and full like a big river.
Different facets of talent: peasant woman and ballerina
Like any talented person, Vera Mukhina always sought and found different means of self-expression. New forms, their dynamic sharpness, occupied her creative imagination. How to depict volume, its different dynamic forms, how to bring imaginary lines closer to a specific nature, this is what Mukhina was thinking about when creating her first famous sculpture of a peasant woman. In it, Mukhina showed beauty and power for the first time female body. Her heroine is not an airy sculpture, but an image of a working woman, but this is not an ugly loose lump, but an elastic, solid and harmonious figure, not devoid of living feminine grace.
“My “Baba,” said Mukhina, “stands firmly on the ground, unshakably, as if hammered into it. I made it without nature, from my head. Working all summer, from morning to evening.”
Mukhina’s “Peasant Woman” immediately attracted the closest attention, but opinions were divided. Some were delighted, and others shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment, but the results of the exhibition of Soviet sculpture dedicated to the first ten-year anniversary of the October Revolution showed the absolute success of this extraordinary work - “The Peasant Woman” was taken to the Tretyakov Gallery.
Later in 1934, “The Peasant Woman” was exhibited at the XIX International Exhibition in Venice and its first bronze cast became the property of the Vatican Museum in Rome. Having learned about this, Vera Ignatievna was very surprised that her rough-looking and seemingly axed-together, but full of dignity and calm Russian woman took a place in the famous museum.
It should be noted that at this time an individual artistic style Mukhina, distinctive features which becomes the monumentality of forms, the accentuated architectonics of sculpture and the power of the plastic artistic image. This signature Mukhina style in the late twenties propelled her into the avant-garde group of muralists who were developing the design of Soviet exhibitions in different countries Europe.
Sculpture “Peasant Woman” by V.I. Mukhina (low tide, bronze, 1927)
Sketches “Peasant Woman” by V.I. Mukhina (low tide, bronze, 1927)
While working on the sculpture, Vera Mukhina came to the conclusion that for her, generalization is important in every image. The tightly built, somewhat weighted “Peasant Woman” was the artistic ideal of those years. Later, having visited Europe under the influence of the elegant works of glassblowers from Murano, Mukhina creates a new female image - a ballerina sitting in a musical pose. Mukhina sculpted this image from an actress friend of hers. She first converted the sculpture into marble, then faience, and then only in 1947 into glass. Different artistic images and different materials contributed to the change in the aesthetic ideals of the sculptor, making her work versatile.
In the 1940s, Mukhina was passionate about design, working as a theater artist, and inventing faceted glasses that became iconic. She is especially attracted to highly talented and creative people, among them the famous ballerinas Galina Ulanova and Marina Semenova occupy a special place. Her passion for ballet reveals new facets in Mukhina’s work; with the same power of expressiveness, she reveals the plastic images of such different Russian women - a simple peasant woman and famous ballerina– Russian ballet star Galina Ulanova.
Creative inspiration captured in bronze
The most romantic and inspired among all the works of Vera Mukhina was the monument to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, standing in the courtyard of the Moscow Conservatory on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street. The sculptural composition is located at the main facade of the conservatory and is the dominant feature of the entire architectural complex.
This work is distinguished by originality, great musician is depicted at the moment of creative inspiration, although Mukhina’s colleagues criticized Mukhina for Tchaikovsky’s tense pose and some overload with details, but in general the compositional solution of the monument, as well as the place itself, were chosen very well. It seems that Pyotr Ilyich listens to the music pouring from the conservatory windows and involuntarily conducts to the beat.
The monument to the composer near the walls of the Moscow Conservatory is one of the most popular attractions in the capital. It gained particular popularity among conservatory students who literally took it apart. Before restoration in 2007, its openwork lattice was missing 50 note signs; according to legend, possessing a note will bring good luck in musical creativity. Even the bronze pencil has disappeared from the composer’s hands, but so far no equal figure has appeared in the musical world.
Triumph
But the real apogee of Mukhina’s work was the design of the Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. The sculptural composition “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” shocked Europe and was called a masterpiece of twentieth-century art. Not every creator manages to receive universal recognition and experience such tremendous success, but the main thing is to convey the idea of the work to the viewer so that he understands it. Vera Ignatievna was able to make sure that not only the decorative appeal excited people, they acutely felt the very ideological content of the sculpture, which reflected the dynamism of the great industrial era. “The impression made by this work in Paris gave me everything an artist could wish for,” these words were written by Vera Mukhina, summing up the happiest year of her work.
Mukhina's talent is enormous and multifaceted, unfortunately, it was not fully in demand. She never managed to realize many of her ideas. It is symbolic that the most beloved of all unrealized works was the Icarus monument, which was made for the pantheon of fallen pilots. In 1944, a trial version of it was exhibited at the so-called Exhibition of Six, where it was tragically lost. But, despite unfulfilled hopes, the work of Vera Mukhina, so strong, impetuous and unusually integral, raised the world's monumental art to enormous heights, like the ancient “Icarus”, who for the first time knew the joy of conquering the sky.
Literature
- Voronova O.P. Vera Ignatievna Mukhina. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1976.
- Suzdalev P.K. Vera Ignatievna Mukhina. M., “Art”, 1981.
- Bashinskaya I.A. Vera Ignatievna Mukhina (19989-1953). Leningrad. "Artist of the RSFSR", 1987.
- http://progulkipomoskve.ru/publ/monument/pamjatnik_chajkovskomu_u_moskovskoj_konservatorii_na_bolshoj_nikitskoj_ulice/43-1-0-1182
- http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_10_17/Neizvestnaja-Vera-Muhina/ http://smartnews.ru/articles/11699.html#ixzz2kExJvlwA
1 Florentine politician, merchant and banker, owner of the largest fortune in Europe.
2 Antoine Bourdelle is a famous French sculptor.
Vera Ignatievna Mukhina - Soviet sculptor, People's Artist of the USSR (1943). Author of works: “Flame of the Revolution” (1922-1923), “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” (1937), “Bread” (1939); monuments to Gorky (1938-1939), Tchaikovsky (1954).
Our heroine was incredibly lucky with her grandfather, Kuzma Ignatievich Mukhin. He was an excellent merchant and left his relatives a huge fortune, which made it possible to brighten up the not very happy childhood of his granddaughter Verochka. The girl lost her parents early, and only her grandfather’s wealth and the decency of her uncles allowed Vera and her older sister Maria not to experience the material hardships of orphanhood.
Vera Mukhina grew up meek, well-behaved, sat quietly in class, and studied at the gymnasium approximately. She didn’t show any special talents, maybe she just sang well, occasionally wrote poetry, and enjoyed drawing. And which of the lovely provincial (Vera grew up in Kursk) young ladies with the right upbringing did not show such talents before marriage?
The sisters decided to move to Moscow. It was in Moscow that the maturation of the personality and talent of the future sculptor began. It was wrong to think that, without receiving the proper upbringing and education, Vera changed as if by magic. Our heroine has always been distinguished by amazing self-discipline, ability to work, diligence and passion for reading, and for the most part she chose serious books, not girlish ones. This previously deeply hidden desire for self-improvement gradually began to manifest itself in the girl in Moscow. She's looking for a decent one art studio, is concerned about the creative impulses of Surikov or Polenov, who were still actively working at that time.
Vera entered the studio of Konstantin Yuon, a famous landscape painter and a serious teacher, easily: there was no need to pass exams - pay and study - but studying was not easy. Her amateur, childish drawings in the studio of a real painter did not stand up to any criticism, and ambition drove Mukhina, the desire to excel daily chained her to a sheet of paper. She literally worked like a convict. Here, in Yuon's studio, Vera acquired her first artistic skills, but, most importantly, she acquired the first glimpses of her own creative individuality and her first passions.
She was not interested in working on color; she devoted almost all her time to drawing, graphics of lines and proportions, trying to reveal the almost primitive beauty of the human body. In her student works, the theme of admiration for strength, health, youth, and simple clarity of mental health sounded more and more clearly. For the beginning of the 20th century, such an artist’s thinking, against the backdrop of the experiments of the surrealists and cubists, seemed too primitive.
One day the master set a composition on the theme “dream”. Mukhina drew a picture of a janitor falling asleep at the gate. Yuon winced with displeasure: “There is no fantasy in dreams.” Perhaps the reserved Vera did not have enough imagination, but she had in abundance youthful enthusiasm, admiration for strength and courage, and the desire to unravel the mystery of the plasticity of the living body.
Without leaving Yuon's classes, Mukhina began working in the workshop of the sculptor Sinitsina. Vera felt an almost childlike delight when she touched the clay, which made it possible to fully experience the mobility of human joints, the magnificent flight of movement, and the harmony of volume.
Sinitsyna withdrew from studying, and sometimes understanding the truths had to be achieved at the cost of great effort. Even the tools were taken at random. Mukhina felt professionally helpless: “Something huge is planned, but my hands can’t do it.” In such cases, the Russian artist of the beginning of the century went to Paris. Mukhina was no exception. However, her guardians were afraid to let the girl go abroad alone.
Everything happened as in the banal Russian proverb: “There would be no happiness, but misfortune would help.”
At the beginning of 1912, during the joyful Christmas holidays, while riding on a sleigh, Vera seriously injured her face. She underwent nine plastic surgeries, and when six months later she saw herself in the mirror, she fell into despair. I wanted to run, hide from people. Mukhina changed apartments, and only great inner courage helped the girl tell herself: she must live, they live worse. But the guardians considered that Vera had been cruelly offended by fate and, wanting to make up for the injustice of fate, they released the girl to Paris.
In Bourdelle's workshop, Mukhina learned the secrets of sculpture. In the huge, hotly heated halls, the master moved from machine to machine, mercilessly criticizing his students. Vera got it the most; the teacher did not spare anyone’s pride, including women’s. Once Bourdelle, having seen Mukhina’s sketch, sarcastically remarked that Russians sculpt “illusively rather than constructively.” The girl broke the sketch in despair. How many more times will she have to destroy her own works, numb from her own inadequacy?
During her stay in Paris, Vera lived in a boarding house on Rue Raspail, where Russians predominated. In the colony of fellow countrymen, Mukhina met her first love - Alexander Vertepov, a man of an unusual, romantic destiny. A terrorist who killed one of the generals, he was forced to flee Russia. In Bourdelle's workshop, this young man, who had never picked up a pencil in his life, became the most talented student. The relationship between Vera and Vertepov was probably friendly and warm, but the aged Mukhina never dared to admit that she had more than friendly sympathy for Vertepov, although she never parted with his letters all her life, often thought about him and never spoke about anyone like that. with hidden sadness, as about a friend of his Parisian youth. Alexander Vertepov died in the First World War.
The final highlight of Mukhina’s studies abroad was a trip to the cities of Italy. The three of them with their friends crossed this fertile country, neglecting comfort, but how much happiness Neapolitan songs and the shimmering stone of classical sculpture brought them.
Mukhina V.I. “Bread”. Bronze. 1939.
The return to Russia was overshadowed by the outbreak of war. Vera, having mastered the qualifications of a nurse, went to work in an evacuation hospital. Out of habit, it seemed not only difficult, but unbearable. “The wounded arrived there straight from the front. You tear off the dirty, dried bandages - blood, pus. Rinse with peroxide. Lice,” and many years later she recalled with horror. In a regular hospital, where she soon asked to go, it was much easier. But despite new profession, which, by the way, she did for free (fortunately, her grandfather’s millions gave her this opportunity), Mukhina continued to devote her free time sculpture.
There is even a legend that once upon a time a young soldier was buried in the cemetery next to the hospital. And every morning, near the tombstone made by a village craftsman, the mother of the murdered man appeared, grieving for her son. One evening, after artillery shelling, they saw that the statue was broken. They said that Mukhina listened to this message in silence, sadly. And the next morning a new monument appeared on the grave, more beautiful than the previous one, and Vera Ignatievna’s hands were covered in bruises. Of course, this is only a legend, but how much mercy, how much kindness is invested in the image of our heroine.
S. A. Zamkov. Marble. 1935.
In the hospital, Mukhina met her betrothed funny last name Castles. Subsequently, when Vera Ignatievna was asked what attracted her to her future husband, she answered in detail: “He has a very strong creativity. Internal monumentality. And at the same time a lot from the man. Inner rudeness with great spiritual subtlety. Besides, he was very handsome."
Alexey Andreevich Zamkov was indeed a very talented doctor, he treated unconventionally, tried traditional methods. Unlike his wife Vera Ignatievna, he was a sociable, cheerful, sociable person, but at the same time very responsible, with a heightened sense of duty. They say about such husbands: “With him she’s like behind a stone wall.”Vera Ignatievna was lucky in this sense. Alexey Andreevich invariably took part in all of Mukhina’s problems.
Flame roarresolutions
Our heroine’s creativity flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. The works “Flame of the Revolution”, “Julia”, “Peasant Woman” brought fame to Vera Ignatievna not only in her homeland, but also in Europe.
One can argue about the degree of Mukhina’s artistic talent, but it cannot be denied that she became a real “muse” of an entire era. Usually they lament about this or that artist: they say, he was born at the wrong time, but in our case one can only be surprised at how successfully the creative aspirations of Vera Ignatievna coincided withthe needs and tastes of her contemporaries. The cult of physical strength and health in Mukhina’s sculptures perfectly reproduced and contributed greatly to the creation of the mythology of Stalin’s “falcons”, “beautiful girls”, “Stakhanovites” and “Pash Angelin”y."
Mukhina said about her famous “Peasant Woman” that it was “a goddessI am fertility, Russian Pomona." Indeed, the legs of a column, above them a tightly built torso rises ponderously and at the same time lightly, freely.
“This one will give birth standing up and won’t grunt,” said one of the spectators. Mighty shoulders adequately complete the bulk of the back, and above everything is an unexpectedly small, graceful for thisof the powerful body - the head. Well, what is not the ideal builder of socialism - an uncomplaining but healthy slavenya?
Europe in the 1920s was already infected with the bacillus of fascism, bazilloy of mass cult hysteria, so Mukhina’s images were viewed there with interest and understanding. After the 19th International Exhibition in Venice, “The Peasant Woman” was bought by the Trieste Museum.
Peasant woman
But Vera Ignatievna brought even greater fame to the famousI am a composition that has become a symbol of the USSR - “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”. And it was also created in a symbolic year - 1937 - for the pavilion of the Soviet Union at an exhibition in Paris. Architect Iofan developed a project where the building was supposed to resemble a speeding ship, the bow of which, according to classical custom, was supposed to be crowned with a statue. Or rather, a sculptural group.
Competition in which four people took part famous masters, our heroine won for the best monument project. The sketches of the drawings show how painfully the idea itself was born. Here is a running naked figure (initially Mukhina sculpted a man naked - the mighty ancient god walked next to modern woman, - but according to instructions from above “Goda” had to be dressed up), in her hands she has something like an Olympic torch. Then another appears next to her, the movement slows down, it becomes calmer... The third option is a man and a woman holding hands: both themselves, and the sickle and hammer they raisedt solemnly calm. Finally, the artist settled on an impulse of movement, enhanced by a rhythmic and clear gesture.
Mukhina’s decision to launch most of the sculptural volumes through the air, flying horizontally, has no precedent in world sculpture. With such a scale, Vera Ignatievna had to check every curve of the scarf for a long time, calculating every fold. It was decided to make the sculpture from steel, a material that before Mukhina had been used only once in world practice by Eiffel, who made the Statue of Liberty in America. But the Statue of Liberty hast very simple outlinesme: this is a female figure in a wide toga, the folds of which lie on the pedestal. Mukhina had to create a complex, hitherto unprecedented structure.
They worked, as was customary under socialism, in rush hours, storming, seven days a week, in record time. Mukhina later said that one of the engineers fell asleep at the drawing table due to overwork, and in his sleep threw his hand back onto the steam heating and received a burn, but the poor guy never woke up. When the welders fell off their feet, Mukhina and her two assistants began to cook themselves.
Finally, the sculpture was assembled. And they immediately began to take it apart. 28 carriages of the “Worker andcollective farmers,” the composition was cut into 65 pieces. Eleven days later, in the Soviet pavilion at the International Exhibition, a gigantic sculptural group rose above the Seine with a hammer and sickle. Was it possible not to notice this colossus? There was a lot of noise in the press. Instantly, the image created by Mukhina became a symbol of the socialist myth of the 20th century.
Mukhina was given only three weeks to make three-meter clay models.
- These are not plywood figures for a holiday! You just don't understand what we're talking about. This is a mockery! - Mukhina shouted. She slammed her fist on the table and ran out into the corridor, sobbing. But, after crying, the woman came back and said that the order would be completed on time.
Romain Rolland wrote: “On the banks of the Seine, two young Soviet giants in an indomitable impulse raise the hammer and sickle, and we hear a heroic anthem pouring from their chests, which calls the peoples to freedom, to unity and will lead them to victory.”
Graphic artist France Maserel spoke from the podium: “Your sculpture hit us, French artists, like a blow to the head. We sometimes talk about her all evenings.”
French newspapers wrote admiringly that Eiffel Tower Finally a worthy competitor has appeared. Local workers, passing by the monument, saluted him. Parisians even collected several thousand signatures asking that the proletarian monument be left in France.
But, of course, the request was not granted, and the statue returned to its homeland to subsequently become one of the main monuments of the era.
http://www.pansion-mil.ru/library/women/veramuhina/
Almost all Orsovo residents took part in the “Exhibition of Art Works for the Tenth Anniversary of the October Revolution.” Mukhina made “The Peasant Woman” for this exhibition, first in plaster, then - immediately - in bronze. I chose the topic myself: “Since childhood, since I lived on the estate, I have had contact, the inner touch of the peasants.”
Is it a risk to conclude a contract on a topic that is still alien to her art? Only once in her works did an image of a broad-faced, smiling woman tied with a scarf flash, holding a tight head of cabbage - Vera Ignatievna drew her for the cover of the Krasnaya Niva magazine. The artist was warned by many, but she only smiled in response. She didn’t object to anyone, didn’t explain anything, but she sculpted her “Peasant Woman” without life - she imagined it to herself down to the smallest detail. “I just sculpted the hands from Alexei Andreevich,- she said later. - All the Castles have such arms, with short, thick muscles. The legs were sculpted from one woman, the size, of course, was exaggerated to get this impact, inviolability. A face without nature, from the head.”
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Drawings for the statue "Peasant Woman". 1927
However, maybe the risk was not so great? It is worth taking a closer look at the drawings she made in those years: the slender figures of 1923, gravitating towards ancient standards of beauty, by 1928 they became heavier and filled with flesh. And the movements of the figures are so swift and graceful that they seemed almost gliding in the sheets, giving way to motionless turns, the strength of a static position, and internal tension.
Everything in these drawings leads to “The Peasant Woman.” And the immediate sketches for the sculpture no longer seem unexpected: sketches of a healthy village woman with a tucked-up skirt, powerful, widely spaced legs, sometimes resting on her sides, sometimes with her arms crossed on her chest. The development of the artist’s thoughts is natural and logical. And although the drawings do not yet have the generality that will appear in the sketch and then in the statue, the type of heroine being recreated is definite and unchanged.
It was thanks to the clarity and completeness of the plan that Mukhina was able to make both a half-meter sketch and a large, almost two-meter figure over the summer. She worked first in Borisov - in a temporary workshop built in the middle of a vegetable garden, built by Alexei Andreevich from two log cabins - then in Moscow, "very persistent". Even the guests who constantly visited Zamkov, fellow doctors and students who rose from the hayloft at dawn did not interfere: Alexey Andreevich received him willingly, treated him widely, people loved to come to him. In the morning he went with the guests to fishing, in the evening I cooked mash with the youth - it was noisy and fun.
Vera Ignatievna took almost no part in the fun; she was in a hurry with the modeling. However, she didn’t hide her work; if anyone asked to look, she let it in, and in the middle of July, when it became especially hot, she even took the machine out of the workshop into the garden. True, doctors had little understanding of sculpture, and even unfinished sculpture. Perhaps what interested them most was that Vera Ignatievna sculpted the hands of “The Peasant Woman” from her husband’s hands. "Not just brushes,- one of Zamkov’s students will clarify, - whole hands. Even the gesture of the “Peasant Woman” - Alexei Andreevich. He always folded his hands like a Roman patrician.”
"Goddess of Fertility, Russian Pomona", Mukhina said about “The Peasant Woman”. And one more thing: "chernozem". There is no contradiction here. Not just Pomona - Russian Pomona, a pagan peasant goddess.
This is how it turned out: slightly pagan, massive, as if roughly hewn and very earthly. A fabulous Russian woman, the one who "will stop a galloping horse in a burning the hut will enter», will withstand any suffering. Leg-columns grow out of the ground (only on the instructions of the commission that accepted the sketch did Mukhina place her heroine on the sheaves); above them, a tightly built torso rises ponderously and at the same time easily, freely. “This one will give birth standing up and won’t grunt,”- said Mashkov; powerful shoulders, fittingly completing the bulk of the back; and above all this, an unexpectedly small, graceful head for this powerful body.
Peasant woman. Bronze. 1927
Tretyakov Gallery.
A tucked-in skirt with flowing pleats that are slightly slanted at the back; straight, “cylinder” shirt; a woman's scarf tied, under which one can discern a tuft of hair, parted in the front; hump nose; soft, somewhat sensual lips.
The folds of the shirt and skirt flow to the ground, and - from top to bottom - all forms of the figure become heavier and larger; every muscle fills up, becomes tangible, weighty, and it seems that there is no force capable of moving the “Peasant Woman” from its place. In the words of Mukhina, here “the “visual weight” of volumes is of particular importance”- one of the main properties of sculpture, a full-bodied, full-blooded sound of mass in space.
Analyzing “The Peasant Woman,” critics of the late twenties will remember Bourdelle. Yes, he was Mukhina’s teacher. And according to the testimony of Ternovets’ wife N.V. Yavorskaya, in the second half of the twenties, interest in French sculpture again flared up in Vera Ignatievna with particular force: again and again she returned in conversations to Bourdelle and Maillol. After a year in Paris, Mukhina will visit dozens of sculpture workshops and exhibitions, visit the master and, asking him for the keys and an escort, will examine all his workshops, every thing; will write an article about artistic life Paris and will reward Maillol and Bourdelle there with full measure, calling them “the first violins in the general plastic concert,” “two trunks that give juice to their younger branches.” Yes, moving from “Julia” to “The Peasant Woman,” she seems to be returning from the physicality and rapture of the harmony of Maillol’s living body to the stern restraint and thoughtfulness of Bourdelle. And yet - only externally.” In those very common points of contact that can be found among dozens of artists.
As in “Julia” there is no frank sensuality of Maillol, ( "art is sensuality itself"- he said), and in “The Peasant Woman” there are completely different creative criteria and categories of thinking than in Bourdelle. It is not for nothing that in the same article Mukhina separates herself from him, stating that “He has many connoisseurs, but few clear-cut followers; probably, his temperament is very individual and cannot be repeated.”
An interesting story is told by Lazar Isaakovich Dubinovsky, who studied with Bourdelle in recent years life of a sculptor.
“Bourdel recognized almost all of his former students, he had a good memory. He smiled and spoke two or three phrases benevolently and coldly. But he gave the keys to the workshops only to those whose works or at least photographs from them seemed interesting to him. He said: “Imitators - and the majority of those who study here in Paris do not rise above this - do not need to show anything.” He did not tolerate imitators, and his favorite student, oddly enough, was Giacometti. “A frame sculpture, but what talent, what independence of feeling and imagination!”Mukhina was not an imitator, and Bourdelle appreciated this. Of course, she studied the art of sculpture from Bourdelle, but this was a school, and creative influence cannot be understood as a slavish likening of one artist to another. “The influence of a great poet on other poets is not that his poetry is reflected in them, but that it stimulates their own powers; So a ray of sunshine, illuminating the earth, does not impart its power to it, but only excites the power contained in it,”- stated V.G. Belinsky. Bourdelle's later works did not find a response in Mukhina ( “...did official things. I didn't like his friezes at the Marseille Opera: it's not big style, in which he previously worked, but a schematic stylization").
“The Peasant Woman” is much more specific in terms of the time expressed in it than most of Bourdelle’s works. He strove to reveal in his heroes the universality of human feelings, calling his students to the embodiment of the “universal and eternal.” Mukhina’s “Peasant Woman” does not pretend to be a timeless generalization; she is an exponent only of her era, but this era is expressed in her truly comprehensively: socially, psychologically, and aesthetically. In her appearance, the structure of her head and figure, she is very Russian; in terms of posture, demeanor, self-confidence - a woman of the late twenties, a peasant of the Soviet Union, the mistress of her life; as Vera Ignatievna herself said, "a conscious person, not a slave."
Critics were unanimous in recognizing this. Mukhina’s “Peasant Woman” is undoubtedly the best sculptural work at the exhibition. Carved in a wide, truly monumental manner, this figure gives an image of great emotional power... Rough, thick-legged, with a tucked hem, legs spread heavily, firmly and stubbornly, she gives the impression of being hewn with wide swings of an ax, but her whole posture is full of impressive dignity and deceased strength. In this figure, Mukhina managed to provide a truly artistic synthesis of the liberated “black soil”. When you look at her you can’t help but think: “Yes, she rules the earth herself.”, - wrote Ignatius Khvoinik.
In “The Peasant Woman,” Mukhina’s many years of artistic search found an outcome, and her creative doubts were resolved. She herself said that with this sculpture she finally came to the concept of a generalized image as the basis for her art. She was glad that her formal search had finally ended. And although, as for any real artist, her search for form will end only with death, the positive part of this statement is precisely formulated: the artist’s main method from now on will be the generalization of specific, life observations, the desire for a form that is metaphorically capacious, laconic and monumental. The one that A.V. Lunacharsky characterizes it as “very economically taken, expressively generalized realistic monumentalism.”
I.D. Shadr. Cobblestone is the weapon of the proletariat. 1927
Next to the “Peasant Woman” at the “Exhibition of Artworks for the Tenth Anniversary of the October Revolution,” such compositions, deservedly included in the golden fund of Soviet art, as “Cobblestone - a weapon of the proletariat” by I.D. were exhibited. Shadra, “October” by A.T. Matveeva. “Cobblestone - the weapon of the proletariat” became a symbol of the fighting and victorious working class: showing his hero straightening up, Shadr seemed to sum up the results of all three Russian revolutions, telling the viewer not only about what happened on the barricades of 1905, but also what followed next - in 1917 “October” was impeccable in terms of plasticity: based on classic designs and techniques, Matveev managed to get away from repeating conventional mythological images. From the courageous figures, from the inspired faces of the Red Army, the worker and the peasant, there was an air of confidence in the steadfastness of the gains of the revolution. Yet “The Peasant Woman” stood out even in this magnificent setting. “Cobblestone - Weapon of the Proletariat” was awarded the third prize, “October” - the second, “Peasant Woman” - the first.
The bronze cast of the statue was installed in the Tretyakov Gallery, and in 1934 “The Peasant Woman” was exhibited at the 19th International Exhibition in Venice and sold to the Trieste Museum. A second bronze casting was made for the Tretyakov Gallery, and the first in 1946, after the end of the Second World War, became the property of the Vatican Museum in Rome. “If they had predicted this to me in 1914, when I was in this museum, I would never have believed it,”- Vera Ignatievna smiled.
“The Peasant Woman” brought Mukhina the opportunity to go to Paris for three months. It seemed that time was running out: it was necessary to visit workshops and exhibitions, feel how French sculptors live, visit the International Book Exhibition in Cologne (Mukhina participated in its design), and stop by Budapest to visit Maria Ignatievna. And yet, Vera Ignatievna shortened this business trip by another month: August eleventh marked the tenth anniversary of her marriage to Zamkov. Celebration? Guests? No, the day passed as usual, but she didn’t want to be away from Alexei Andreevich that day.
They lived together. Everyone who was in their house said that they did not hear either a raised voice or an irritated tone in it. A quarrel or shouting was generally unthinkable. And it wasn’t that they both had, as Mukhina said, "flexible character" but in true respect for each other.
Outwardly they seemed different, very different. She is reserved, dry, “with the manners of a demanding teacher,” as one of her contemporaries noted. He is noisy, loud, openly emotional. She is always neat, smart, reserved; It’s not easy to understand from her facial expression what’s in her heart: she’s happy - a barely noticeable half-smile; she’s sad or angry - a stern look, slightly knitted eyebrows. What’s in his heart is also on his face: if he laughs, it’s out loud, if he’s sad, then it’s like an autumn cloud. He had little regard for external decorum; he could go to any reception with his collar unbuttoned.
Vera Ignatievna, although she devoted the lion’s share of her time, tried to do her work unnoticed by others, “alone with herself.” Alexey Andreevich loved to “show himself off.” He invited students to Borisovo on Saturday and Sunday, when peasants came to receive him as if on a church holiday - there were carts with horses along the entire street. Remembering that the village helped him survive the hungry years civil war, Zamkov received peasants for free, and the sick were brought from afar.
Vera Ignatyevna was not only scrupulous in everything, she was pedantic. After the success of “Julia” and “Wind”, after the fame brought by “The Peasant Woman,” while teaching sculpture at Vkhutein, she never agreed to teach senior courses: “I myself don’t have an academic education, what can I teach them?” Such doubts were alien to Alexey Andreevich; he trusted his intuition much more than the textbook. “I kept pushing him towards the theory,” said D.A. Arapov, Zamkov's student, later chief surgeon Navy USSR. - Before the operation I persuade: “Let’s read about such cases!” - “Okay, Mitya, let’s read it. Let’s do it and then read it.”
Whether Zamkov laughed at the zeal of the novice surgeon or in fact “figured out a lot on the fly,” in any case he did not suffer from lack of self-confidence and, on the contrary, was ready to show off his capabilities effectively when the opportunity arose. Not at all like Mukhina. And yet they had much more in common than they had differences. The differences are in the little things, in appearance, behavior, in what is not difficult to get used to in a loved one. The general is in the fundamental, the main thing.
And the main thing was the passion with which each of them devoted himself to his work, an interested, creative attitude towards the world around him, and goodwill towards people.
In the papers left behind by Vera Ignatievna, there are letters she received from people she did not personally know, letters of gratitude. From war invalid Ivan Kochnev; blind and confused, he wrote to her only because that day there was an article about her in the newspaper, he wrote with a request to tell her where he could buy an accordion inexpensively. Vera Ignatievna herself bought and sent him this button accordion. From Flakserman, also disabled: “After the war I’ve been lying flat for a year now”; I transferred money to him for treatment. From Palangina, Mukhina bought a ticket to a sanatorium for her son who was sick with tuberculosis.
There are even more such letters in the Zamkov archive. Long, eloquent - and sometimes illiterate scribbles: “Please do your best to send me the shoes, since I have no one else to turn to, I remember you at all times for your efforts towards us.” And he, in the thirties, one of the most famous doctors in Moscow, fussed, got it, bought it, sent it.
“He did not know how to be indifferent to someone else’s misfortune, grief, and could remain for hours near a person who needed his help, although he himself was very busy with other matters,” Galina Serebryakova said. - He never treated patients with the same medicine, according to the standard. Zamkov never tired of asking the patient about his feelings, found out the cause of the disease, and could not hesitate to go to the kitchen to prepare a dish according to his recipe, which he considered no less effective for treatment than pills and mixtures... And Zamkov had one more powerful remedy - he believed that the word is omnipotent. More than once, when visiting him while receiving patients, I listened with a growing sense of respect to how carefully, intelligently, and sometimes with good humor, he spoke to patients, dispelled their fear, and healed their souls.”His light hand and faithful eye were noted even before the revolution by Aleksinsky and Gagman, famous doctors at that time. Subsequently Burdenko will call him "diagnostician of Zakharyin's class" in his mouth it will sound like the highest assessment. Zamkov was a diagnostician, surgeon, therapist, urologist, he treated both common colds and such an unexpectedly rare disease as Penda ulcer, he knew medicines and traditional medicine very well. Wrote a book about pharmacopoeia, according to Arapov, "amazing"; almost completely finished, it was lost during the Patriotic War.
These years are some of the happiest for Vera Ignatievna. The son is getting better and is gradually giving up his crutches; she sculpts it at the same time as “The Peasant Woman”, sculpts it in full height without posing any problems. A plump body on strong, yes, already strong legs. He is filled with health and strength.
The sketch is reliably accurate, almost documentary. After his illness, one foot is shorter than the other - Vera Ignatievna reproduces it that way. What a disaster! No one will ever notice this, the boy will not even limp.
Life is smooth, everyday life does not take up much time: Alexandra Andreevna, sister-in-law, runs the household, Anastasia Stepanovna Sobolevskaya, an indispensable member of the family, a friend of Mukhina’s mother, looks after Volik. And although the boy is not always happy with her care: “She never allows me anything!” - he complains to his mother, but Vera Ignatievna is calm. She trusts Anastasia Stepanovna completely, she raised both her and Maria for as long as she can remember - Anastasia Stepanovna is always there.
She is surrounded by friends. Shadr. Lamanova. The Sobinov family - in the late twenties, Mukhina became very close to her second cousin Nina Ivanovna, the singer’s wife. I also became friends with Leonid Vitalievich - "wonderful man" She visited each of the operas in which he sang many times, often took her son with her, and Vsevolod called the artistic box “our box.” I kept a cheerful poem by Sobinov, written by him after the success of “The Peasant Woman”:
Mukhina willingly showed her friends this funny impromptu. Leonid Vitalievich helped Vera Ignatievna understand music more deeply and broadly. Before that, despite the fact that she played and sang, she only loved German composers, especially Wagner. Sobinov introduced her to the music of Russia - to Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. Her passion for opera will remain with her even after the death of Leonid Vitalievich. Complaining about the hardships that fame brings, he will say quite seriously: “The only thing it gives is premieres.”
Her friendship with Ternovets continues. Since 1919, he worked at the State Museum of New Western Art. The permanent director of the museum for twenty years (originally formed from the collections of I.A. Morozov and S.I. Shchukin), Ternovets did a lot to replenish the collections: through the works of Boris Nikolaevich, halls of German, Anglo-American and Czech art were opened in the museum. Full member of the State Academy artistic sciences, a member of the State Academic Council for the scientific and artistic section, an indispensable participant in the organization of Soviet departments at international exhibitions, Ternovets was a true polymath. It was not for nothing that he was called the “fount of knowledge” - no matter what country they talked about in his presence, he could always give accurate information, name works of artists and dates, and indicate the necessary bibliography. His enormous authority helped him increase the museum's funds almost without means: he would either make a successful exchange, or give the museum a work donated to him personally. It was not easy to compete with him in knowledge of young Soviet art. Ternovets did not miss a single exhibition, reviewed them, visited the sculptors’ workshops, and followed the work of each; he wrote the first monographic article about Mukhina (it was published in 1934 in the magazine “Iskusstvo”), the first book about her, published in 1937.
He visited the Zamkovs regularly, but even more often Vera Ignatievna went to see him at the museum; she loved the atmosphere that reigned there, businesslike and at the same time friendly. “No one among us was looking for external success and recognition,- said the head of political and educational work of the museum A.P. Altukhova. - The main thing for all of us was the love of art and the desire to bring art closer to the people. Boris Nikolaevich always behaved very modestly, knew how to “not be a boss,” he never gave orders or even pointed out, did not reprimand anyone, but they worked under him not out of fear, but out of conscience.”
The desire to bring art closer to the people was always close to Mukhina, and it is not surprising that she looked closely at the work of museum workers with such interest: visiting lectures at factories, where they organized small traveling graphic exhibitions; to unique excursions, during which the guides did not try to cover all the halls, but stopped with the audience in front of several paintings and began not a lecture, but a conversation: asking what feelings the paintings evoked, they helped to understand their meaning and evaluate their artistic merits. A cheerful “methodological song” sung by museum workers ( “We’ll show you three paintings, we won’t say anything about them, you yourself will tell us what you will feel there.”), Vera Ignatievna knew as well as they themselves.
After “The Peasant Woman,” she decided to take a break from big things and took up portraits. This genre was very attractive to artists - members of the Society of Russian Sculptors and sculptors from the AHRR - Association of Artists - worked on the portraits revolutionary Russia, the most widespread artistic association of the twenties.
Ahrrovites gave preference to documentary portraits, chose significant people to portray who played a role in the life of the country, and tried to follow nature as much as possible. The Orsovites believed that the intimate-psychological portrait should be replaced by representative and at the same time generalized portraits, realistically expressive and at the same time symbolic. Bryullov is right a thousand times! - they exclaimed. In a portrait you want to take all the best from a person! And this is the most difficult task for an artist.
Respect for nature, but not an attempt to imitate it - that was the slogan of the Society of Russian Sculptors.
“The physical image of a person does not always correspond to his psychological image,” explained Domogatsky . - Under the influence of what we learn about his spiritual essence, or what we put into him, his physical image is transformed in our imagination. We exaggerate those features that in our minds are characteristic... When you approach strangers before without a preconceived opinion, the image (and characteristics) of the face are formed under the influence of the first laconic impressions. They are strong in their freshness, but not sufficient, not complicated by a deeper knowledge of the individual. Usually, in this case, the similarity turns out to be superficial, and it is shared, like you, by those who are not very familiar with the people. After some time, the impression usually changes greatly, and the work, started on the fly, undergoes complex alterations in accordance with the new characteristic found.”Almost everyone in the Society of Russian Sculptors was involved in portraits. And Domogatsky, and Kepinov, and Zlatovratsky, and Frikh-Khar, and the Andreev brothers, and Sandomirskaya, and Rakhmanov, and Korolev. Mukhina considered Shadra to be the founder of the Soviet portrait: in 1922, while creating emblems for the first Soviet banknotes at the request of Goznak, Ivan Dmitrievich sculpted portraits of his fellow peasants: Kiprian Avdeev and Perfiliy Kalganov, managing not only to find a characteristic Russian nature, but also to convey in the images of peasants something new that entered the life and psychology of the people after the revolution; His heroes are connected to the land not by bonded labor, but by free labor.
I.D. Shadr. Sower (Fragment). 1922
Mukhina also liked Shadr’s portrait of Krasin, and yet she considered Sarah Dmitrievna Lebedeva, not him, to be the best portrait painter: “She feels keenly and knows how to combine an unbiased attitude towards a model with a serious study of her... There are no simplifications in her portraits, her heroes live a complex spiritual life, do not hide from themselves the tragic contradictions of reality, almost all of them are people of great will and high moral purity” . In addition, Mukhina was impressed by Lebedeva’s persistence in her work, her willingness to overcome obstacles: Sarra Dmitrievna always tried to work from life, she even sculpted a portrait of F.E. from life. Dzerzhinsky, although it was extremely difficult to carry a working machine and clay into his office in the Main Political Directorate.
S.D. Lebedeva. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. 1925
Vera Ignatyevna also sculpts from life. Not intending to compete with Sarra Dmitrievna in the choice of portraits (she sculpted Tsyurupa, Budyonny), she turns to those people whom she knows well and with whom she constantly meets. Sculpts Andrei Kirillovich Zamkov - the father of Alexei Andreevich, his sister - Alexandra Andreevna, his cousin - Alexander Alekseevich Zamkov. He sculpts his friends - Professor Sergei Aleksandrovich Kotlyarevsky, Professor Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov - director of the Institute of Experimental Biology, where Alexey Andreevich works.
Portrait of S.A. Kotlyarevsky. 1929
All these portraits are well designed, most of them by Vera Ignatievna in bronze. In those days, it seemed to her that bronze was the best material for a portrait: expressively viscous, responding to a barely noticeable pressure of the fingers; capable of conveying both the strength of the skeleton and the dynamic variability of the human face; beautiful in color saturation.
In all the portraits, the likeness is carefully recreated, each face reveals its own characteristic, but this accuracy is somewhat superficial. Mukhina failed to reveal the character of her characters. Moreover, at times she followed the “path of least resistance”: she emphasized Andrei Kirillovich’s senile good looks, making him look like the saint of canonical Russian frescoes.
But he was by no means a saint, old man Zamkov. On the contrary, he is malicious, petty and insatiable in desires. He was not loved by his family. Partly because of his difficult character, suspicious, touchy. Partly because, having lived most of the time in the waste industry in the city and returned to Borisovo to his now grown-up children, he remained a stranger to them. While Marfa Osipovna was alive, she smoothed out family troubles, but now everything has come out. Not a day passed without Andrei Kirillovich complaining to one of the sons about the other or demanding money.
Portrait of a grandfather (Andrey Kirillovich Zamkov). 1928
None of this can be read in the portrait. But the old man’s beauty gave rise to speculation that Mukhina was striving to create "typical peasant head" or even "thinker, prophet" With that look? Distrustful and wary? (However, one study says so: “... everything strong, energetic, Russian is sculpted and emphasized in the ancestral castle head: a powerful open forehead, a gloomy suspicious look...”)
The portrait of Alexandra Andreevna is also impressive in sculpting, but not very meaningful. Soft waves of hair, a lush topknot, gentle and at the same time majestic femininity. But what can you say about her as a person? Beauty - yes! But that's all.
When exhibited, these portraits, despite the generally favorable tone of the articles and reviews, did not evoke the same enthusiasm as “The Peasant Woman” was received. Critics immediately noted the most weak point. Each of the portraits evoked direct and obvious associations: the grandfather - with icon painting; Alexandra Zamkova - with Greek antique heads; Kotlyarevsky - with expressionistic sculptural portraits.
Portrait of A.A. Zamkova. 1930
Is it possible to agree with the opinion that, having seen sculptural portraits in Paris in 1928, replenished with a variety of methods, and not being able to decide which of these methods is most suitable for her tasks, Mukhina decides to try them all: both the Greeks and Bourdelle , and Despio, and even Hanna Orlova? Hardly. How can one imagine that a sculptor, who has already felt like an artist and has received public recognition, voluntarily decides to make and exhibit things that evoke thoughts of imitation? Especially after the credo expressed by Mukhina: “Stealing someone else’s property is scary!” It is more logical to assume that the lack of awareness and vagueness of the creative concept, the leading thread, led to this result. All the works are professional, well-made, but not a single one carries the grain of something new.
Standing apart among these portraits is “Collective Farmer Matryona Levina.” There is also something superficial, “attracted” in it; It’s not for nothing that when looking at Matryona’s smile, the smile of Gioconda was so often recalled, and yet this is no longer so much a direct influence as a shadow of it.
She is very attractive, this young collective farmer, although not with the clear, victorious beauty of Alexandra Zamkova. There is some elusive pride in her. This woman strong character, with a subtle and poetic perception of the world. And neither prominent cheekbones, nor large ears, nor a tightly fitting headscarf can hide this.
“Collective Farmer Matryona Levina” pleases not only with the skill of execution - with the density and fullness of seemingly sovereign forms. In this work, as in embryo, what will later become an indispensable quality of Mukhina as a portrait painter is outlined: an attraction to monumentalization, severity of forms, and exacting psychological characteristics.
Collective farmer Matryona Levina. 1928
This sculpture brings Mukhina into line with other ORS portrait painters. Without standing out among them in any way, the artist declares her desire to rise to philosophical understanding the personalities of those portrayed, before typifying the image.
Life went on smoothly. Summer in Borisov, winter in Moscow. Sculpting portraits did not take up all of Vera Ignatievna’s time. Taking a break from it, she found time to teach and work at exhibitions.
Mukhina was always happy when she had the opportunity to design an exhibition. She knew for sure: a thing should not only be beautiful in itself, it must be presented, “showed with its face.” I recalled with pleasure:
“Together with Akhmetyev, I participated in two exhibitions abroad. One of them was a book exhibition in Cologne in 1927, where we created a department of Ukrainian books. When I went abroad in 1928, I stopped in Cologne to see how our exhibitions sounded... The downside of all our designs is unrestrainedness, the desire to say everything without leaving anything out. A million words... Foreigners are stingy in their exposition techniques. A room, a counter, there are five books on the counter, but what books! And with us - perhaps more! The books were well illustrated, but it was all presented too loudly, too loaded with numbers, etc.”Isn't it a contradiction? In the first case, Mukhina advocates stinginess, in the second she tries to make what really exists double and increase tenfold in the eyes of the viewer. No, everything is logical and reasonable: each book must be considered separately; if there are too many of them, none of them will attract attention; a book is a thing that requires silence and solitude. Fur is a different matter. Sables and silver foxes are a luxury, and the more of them there are, the stronger the feeling of fabulous wealth. Both here and there - strict calculation, the desire for functionality, a constructive solution to the problem.
“In 1930, one artist and I did part of a fur exhibition for Leipzig. They set up a moving conveyor belt of foxes. Foxes are found everywhere here - from the Pacific Ocean to Belarus. The further to the east, the darker they are, the further to the west, the redder. We have arranged them by color. We didn’t have that many sables, but we had to make it look like there were a lot of them. We put bellows on silver and gold strings and placed mirrors at the back. The result was an infinite number of sables.” .
Her attraction to constructive thinking is also reflected in her teaching activities: in 1926-1927 she taught modeling classes at the Handicraft and Art College; in 1927-1930 he taught at Vkhutein. Vera Ignatievna is attracted to this work by Chaikov. “I had to talk to her about her sculptures, and I noticed that she was rationalistic in her in a good way this word; She did not rely on immediate, spontaneous feeling; every fold, every line was thought out and logically justified. So I had no doubt that she would be a great teacher."- he said.
Vera Ignatyevna did not give lectures; she preferred to teach from live nature. I searched for a long time, I wanted the students to like the production, I wanted them to sculpt without tension, without internal resistance.
I tried to make my explanations as accessible as possible, making each of my demands understandable to everyone.
“When you look straight into the face of your nature, what is closer to you, say, the bridge of your nose or your chin? - she asked the aspiring sculptor Govorov. - How deep do the eyes sit? How far from the face are the ears placed?.. One has a skull that is wide in its upper part and narrowed towards the chin, the other has a radish head, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom... Only after finding this initial portrait volume, make a nose, eyes, ears on it and so on, which in themselves should also be portraits.”
V.I. Mukhina among second-year students of Vkhutein
She remembered Bourdelle's instructions about the "architecture of volumes" and "completeness of form." Now she passed on this knowledge to her students:
“Always start with large volumes (no matter what you do) and only when you find them, move on to smaller ones, and then to even smaller ones. By working like this, you will finally reach the surface. Never lick or smooth your surface to make it smooth; you will get this smooth thing when you gradually come to the surface from the depths of large forms, making smaller forms.”She considered the most difficult thing in teaching to be the ability to understand the creative individuality of the student: “Terribly difficult work. It’s exhausting: afterwards you’re squeezed out like a lemon peel. I tried to push myself to the limit. They said Mukhina was a good teacher.” She paid a lot of attention to teaching composition. She came up with tasks in which students could demonstrate not only their acquired knowledge, but also their own taste, understanding of harmony - everything that was included in the formula for Vera Ignatievna “ creative individuality" The task was to decorate the façade of the house and the interior staircase with sculpture. Smiled: “These classes gave me something myself...”
In 1930, Vera Ignatievna left teaching. He will return to his problems only theoretically - in 1948, when he will speak at the USSR Academy of Arts at a conference on artistic upbringing and education. He will talk about the need to give the student specific knowledge - “teach him to look in the context of this art”, equip him with technical skill, introduce him in detail and comprehensively to the history of art, without hiding or hushing up anything in it. And also that the teacher is obliged to “preserve individuality”, to allow the student to develop freely, not to suppress himself, but to help him find his own path.
This is a program. It is supplemented by individual fragmentary statements. About compulsory school:
“We, modern sculptors, lack knowledge... We must know form, anatomy, just as in the old days we knew the letter “yat”, where we needed to insert it without thinking.” On the need for creative independence: “You can teach students the most amazing modeling recipes, but if the student doesn’t know how to look, you can’t do anything with him. To be able to see is a lot. If everyone could sculpt, but not look, then all things would be the same.”For Mukhina, a sculptor was like a pianist, a musician. “Imagine a pianist who, while passionately experiencing the music, constantly stumbles during his performance - you will get a good concert. Or a virtuoso in performance, but more dispassionate than a machine - also an unimportant concert.” And so she, trying in every possible way to “get the hang of the student” and “preserve the student’s individuality”, making sure that “the nature is liked”, teaches from the basics: clear and clear drawing, knowledge of three-dimensional form, painstaking and precise rough work. Teaches which theme can be used in relief and which in round sculpture. Warns against minute details and illustrativeness.
What did Mukhina demand from the teacher? Something that only a great artist can give.
“If a student has the ability to feel passionately, this must be cultivated in every possible way; if the fire of feelings burns brightly, you need to support it, if it burns weakly, you need to kindle it, so that until the end of your life the soul is forever young and passionate, like Michelangelo, and always wise, stern and searching, like Leonardo, so as not to let your spirit acquire a stale crust of well-being and self-soothing.”Will this concern for youth be reflected in the artist-teacher? Only in a good sense: if you don’t awaken the student’s soul, “your own” (not his, your own; one can hardly suspect Mukhina of poor knowledge of grammar) “will become overgrown with a stale crust”; both souls find themselves bound together.
Sculptor N.G. Zelenskaya, who studied at Vkhutein, talked about the attractive power of Vera Ignatievna’s class, despite the fact that it was difficult to study with her: Mukhina never helped with sculpting, did not have a hand in student work, and did not try to make it easier to obtain a diploma. Armed with craft techniques ( “I made a special model for the arms and legs”), tried to focus the students’ attention on the main thing, on how important it is for the sculpture to bear traces of the author’s personality.
Vkhutein existed until 1930; then the students were assigned to other institutes according to their specialties, and the painters and sculptors were transferred to the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. Mukhina refused to move with them - she did not want to part with Moscow.
And yet, soon she had to leave - to Voronezh. This departure was connected with the work of Alexei Andreevich.
Working at the Institute of Experimental Biology on the problems of rejuvenation and the fight against old age. Zamkov found a drug that increases vitality. I carried out a series of experiments on animals and tried it on myself. Then he risked giving an injection to a hopelessly ill old woman who had not gotten out of bed for many months. One injection, a second, a third, the result was favorable.
At first, Zamkov used the drug (he called it gravidan) only to improve general well-being and stimulate vigor. Gradually I began to use it for other diseases; it seemed to him that in many cases the drug gave positive results.
Panacea? In medical circles there was talk of witchcraft. “The issues of using gravidan are simpler than it seems,” Zamkov objected. - Any disease is essentially a violation of the hormonal course of the body's life processes... The richness of gravidan in hormones and other active medicinal substances provides it with a powerful regulating effect on the nervous system and endocrine glands. Hence the restoration of the disturbed balance during life processes, that is, improvement or recovery.”
They didn't believe him. Fermentation began at the institute, which Vera Ignatievna explained by “human envy.” As a result, in central newspaper a feuilleton appeared in which Zamkov was called a charlatan. “The article appeared on March 9th,- said Mukhina, - on Alexei Andreevich’s birthday, and hit him on the head with a butt.”
Within a matter of weeks, Alexey Andreevich “turned into a bundle of nerves.” And Vera Ignatievna’s nerves were little better: always restrained and calm, even ten years later she began to cry, remembering that time: “I can’t talk about this period of my life without emotion.”
It all ended with Mukhina and Zamkov leaving Moscow for Voronezh.
Vsevolod was left with the Sobinovs under the supervision of Anastasia Stepanovna - funny and touching children's letters will fly to Voronezh: “They don’t give chocolate.” Alexey Andreevich and Vera Ignatyevna live in Voronezh together, and do everything themselves: she goes to the market, washes clothes, washes the floors; he cooks dinner and washes the dishes.
Zamkov did not give up. Working in a clinic serving workers at a carriage and locomotive repair plant, he continued to treat patients with his medicine. One, two, three, four rose to their feet. And again queues began to form at the door of his office.
“I came into contact with the management and party organization of the plant,- he told himself. - I said: you have a lot of tired, old people. I undertake to repair them. I will repair you, and you will repair the locomotives. Send me notes. I worked especially with those who were ready to go on disability. A lot of people went back to work."
They returned to Moscow two years later with a shield - soon a research institute was created, of which Alexey Andreevich became the head. We settled on the second floor of the former mansion of the publisher Liksperov near the Red Gate. But although Vera Ignatievna lived there for almost fifteen years, she could not fall in love with this apartment. Huge halls, columns, paintings on the stairs: the chariots of Sardanapalus - Liksperov had state rooms on the second floor. They quickly rebuilt it and partitioned it off, but either because they did it in haste or because they didn’t think through the project well, they were never able to erase the “spirit of officialdom” from the mansion. The only good thing was that now the workshop was together with the apartment.
In this workshop, Mukhina returned to work again. She painted portraits of Vsevolod, Alexei Andreevich, and his brother Sergei. Externally, this is a continuation of the family portrait gallery, started before leaving for Voronezh. The choice of characters does not change, but the troubles experienced force Vera Ignatievna to study people more seriously and more carefully, to think more deeply into their inner essence, into their attitude to life and the world.
In the portrait of Vsevolod in a half-childish face (he was fourteen years old at that time) there is a whole range of complex, sometimes contradictory feelings. An unboyishly sad look indicates that he has already had to go through a lot - there were illnesses, separation from his father and mother, worry about them. In the whole appearance of the boy, mental imbalance and defenselessness are palpable.
Portrait of a son. 1934
Vibrating sculpting, unusual for Mukhina, creates the impression of an unstable surface of volumes, as if emphasizing the exciting time of formation that a teenager experiences. Changing World yet undefined feelings are expressed by subtle light-and-shadow nuances of modeling: it seems that the bronze itself is filled with youthful excitement, becomes animated. “He is warmed by the warmth of his heart,- Chaikov will say about this portrait. - You don’t need to read the caption to understand that the artist depicted a very close, beloved person.”
Vera Ignatievna loves Sergei Zamkov almost like a son - before her eyes he has become an adult, he has been living in the family since the Civil War, he is not only a brother, but also a pupil of Alexei Andreevich. Over the years, he graduated from school and university, became an architect, and is busy with a lot of work - designing the construction of New Matsesta. Preparing for the wedding, his bride is the granddaughter of the famous lawyer Plevako, calm, silent (in Moscow they joke that her grandfather spoke out three generations ahead), is studying at a medical institute. Sergei always willingly posed for Vera Ignatievna. In 1922, she sculpted him, still youthfully flexible, into a figurine of a tennis player. Now - a full-length portrait.
Even in the portrait he is young and therefore, despite his seriousness and restraint, he is lyrical. Mukhina emphasizes this with the play of chiaroscuro and the choice of material: coarse-grained Ural marble seems to store the warmth of life. The shoulders, arms, and head, growing out of the marble block, are modeled carefully, carefully - you can feel the tension of the muscles under the skin.
And yet, if you compare the sculptural portrait of Sergei with his photographic images, they will turn out to be both similar and dissimilar at the same time. The appearance in the portrait is more decisive and courageous. He has more balance and self-confidence. This confidence is in posture, in a relaxed turn of the head, and in the free movement of hands.
Builder (portrait of Sergei Andreevich Zamkov). 1934
While maintaining portrait resemblance, Mukhina creates a generalized image in the image of Sergei Zamkov younger generation Soviet country. “Builder” - she gives the second title to the portrait, putting into this word broad concept “the creator-builder of our lives, no matter what field he works in.” “In addition to the portrait resemblance to a person,- says Vera Ignatievna, - I wanted to embody in sculpture the synthetic image of the builder, his unyielding will, his confidence, calmness and strength.” To achieve this, he builds a strict composition, powerful in terms of plastic masses, freely and naturally using the geometric planes of the pedestal.
She thinks a lot about the artist’s right to imagination, about the permissible limits of deviation from nature. “Should the image be protocol? Descendants are not interested in the fine details of the face. What is important for the viewer is an image that he loves, that makes him worry, experience and follow himself. Protocol is of interest only to a contemporary who is personally familiar with the object, or to a scrupulous historian, but this is no longer the field of art.”
Following the reality, highlight the main thing. Focus on what defines human character. This principle is also used by Mukhina as the basis for the portrait of Alexei Andreevich Zamkov.
Alexey Andreevich Zamkov. 1934
Everything is reproduced in the portrait: both the beautiful and the ugly, everything down to the rare strands of hair neatly combed over the head. But the eye involuntarily stops at what it tells about moral essence Zamkova: on a high open forehead, a steep, strong-willed chin, a sharp, intense gaze.
Philosophical reflection on man? Yes, sure. But not just about a person - about a strong and direct personality, typical of his time. It is no coincidence that Mukhina chooses the plastic form of a Roman portrait. For her, the most important thing in a Roman portrait is the feeling of the era. “The historians of Rome Tacitus, Titus Livia and others brought to us the appearance and deeds of their time; the Roman sculptor completed and rounded out the image of his era,”- Vera Ignatievna says admiringly.
“The face of man is the face of history.” Mukhin fills the strict classical clarity of the Roman portrait with a modern sound. In the appearance of Alexey Andreevich, “signs of the era” are not only revealed, but concentrated: consciousness of responsibility to other people, the desire to create, perseverance of will, inflexibility. They are very similar to each other, Alexey and Sergey Zamkov. And not only by the features of family resemblance - the bumps of the forehead, the massiveness of the chin; they are similar in that which makes them contemporaries. The commonality of attitude to life, the unusual combination of calm and mental tension - “ice and fire”. As if to emphasize this similarity, Mukhina makes both portraits not in her favorite bronze, but in marble. Its sparkling whiteness brings a joyful note of major acceptance of life into the sculptures.
It is interesting to compare the portrait of Alexei Andreevich with the portrait of the director of the Institute of Experimental Biology Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov, painted by Mukhina in 1929. The faces of both scientists are illuminated by thought and both bear the imprint of the emotions and trials they have endured. But the appearance of Zamkov is more significant, more complete. It seems that the experience only strengthened his character - “So heavy damask, crushing glass, forges damask steel.”
Professor Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov. 1929
Was Zamkov really a larger and stronger personality? Hardly. Koltsov remained in the history of Soviet science as a man of enormous knowledge, brilliant talent, and excellent moral qualities *. Mukhina’s attitude towards her tasks changed. Koltsov’s portrait is a “stopped moment.” Portrait of Zamkov - revealing the human essence of the model, the connection of the person being portrayed with time.
* Indeed, in the history of Soviet and world science N.K. Koltsov left a deep mark as one of the outstanding researchers of the material nature of genes. It was the scientist’s excellent moral qualities that were manifested in his fight against Lysenkoism (see, for example, in the book by V.Ya. Aleksandrov “The Difficult Years of Soviet Biology” - V.V. )“An honorable and glorious work of the Soviet sculptor,- wrote Vera Ignatievna in the magazine “Sovietland”, - to be a poet of our days, of our country, of its growth.” She strove to ensure that her idea of a person coincided with the high truth of the time. So that the portrait, while remaining a portrait, at the same time becomes a generalized image, “large and majestic.” An image that absorbs the characteristic features of the history of the Land of Soviets.
NOTES
1. Verbatim records of memories of V.I. Mukhina, made by A. Beck and L. Toom, p. 5. Archive of V. A. Zamkov. 14. Ibid. 15. Letters from A.A. Zamkova. Archive of A.A. Zamkova. Manuscripts. TsGANKH 16. Ibid. 17. Manuscript by V.I. Mukhina. TsGALI, f. 2326, units hr. 79. 19. Letter to N.A. Udaltsova. TsGALI, f. 2326, units hr. 237. 20. Letter to B.N. Polevoy. TsGALI, f. 2326, units hr. 215. 21. Letter to A.A. Exter. TsGALI, f. 2326, units hr. 254. 22. Letter to V.I. Mukhina. Not dated. Presumably - five days before death. Archive of N.G. Zelenskaya and Z.G. Ivanova.
Fall up
Sculptor Vera Mukhina
The monument “Worker and Collective Farm Woman,” created by the world’s most famous female sculptor, has long become the hallmark of not only the city, but also, possibly, the country in which Vera Ignatievna Mukhina worked.
Mukhina lived only 64 years. Over the years, she came up with many projects, but only three were realized: “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”, a monument to Tchaikovsky near the Moscow Conservatory and a monument to Gorky, which until recently stood opposite the Belorussky railway station...
Like all children who grew up in wealthy merchant families, Verochka Mukhina received a good education at home. Only the relationship with music did not work out. It seemed to her that her father did not like the way she played. But he, on the contrary, encouraged his daughter to take up drawing.
The parent died when Mukhina turned 14 years old. Mother died long before this in Nice; Vera was then a little over a year old. Therefore, the guardians, the Kursk uncles, took up the task of raising the girl.
The Mukhina sisters - Vera was the youngest - became real socialites provincial Kursk. Once a year we went to Moscow “to get some air and buy clothes.” In company, the teachers often traveled abroad: Berlin, Salzburg, Tyrol. When they decided to move to Moscow, one of the local newspapers wrote: “The Kursk world lost a lot with the departure of the Mukhin ladies.”
In Moscow, settling on Prechistensky Boulevard, Vera continued her painting studies. And she went to school with Konstantin Yuon and Ilya Mashkov. She wanted to study seriously and asked her guardians to let her study abroad. But they didn’t want to hear about anything like that. Until disaster happened.
“At the end of 1911, I went for Christmas to my uncle’s estate in the Smolensk province,” Mukhina herself recalled about this “fall that enriched her life.” “A lot of young people, cousins, gathered there. It was fun. One day we rolled down the mountain. I was reclining in the sleigh, raising my face. The sled ran into a tree, and I hit my face against the tree. The blow landed right on the forehead. My eyes were filled with blood, but there was no pain and I did not lose consciousness. It seemed to me that my skull was cracked. I ran my hand over my forehead and face. The hand did not feel the nose. The nose was torn off.
I was very pretty then. The first feeling was: I can’t live. We need to run, get away from people. We rushed to the doctor. He put nine stitches and inserted a drain. The impact caused my upper lip to get caught between my teeth.”
When the girl was finally brought home, they strictly forbade the servants from giving her a mirror. They were afraid that when she saw her disfigured face, she would commit suicide. But resourceful Vera looked into the scissors. At first I was horrified and seriously thought about joining a monastery, but then I calmed down.
And she asked permission to go to Paris. The guardians, who believed that the girl had already been wronged by fate, agreed. In November 1912, Vera Mukhina left for the capital of France.
She spent only two winters in Paris, studying at the art academy with the sculptor Bourdelle, a student of Rodin. Mukhina later admitted that these classes became her education. “In essence, I am self-taught,” said Vera Ignatievna.
Upon returning home, there was no time for art - in 1914 the war began, and Mukhina became a nurse in the hospital. The war with the Germans smoothly flowed into the Civil War. Vera nursed the whites and the reds.
A new fall - now on a universal scale - again enriched her life. In 1917 she met Alexei Zamkov, her future husband.
Zamkov was a talented doctor. And, according to Mukhina, he had a stage appearance. Stanislavsky himself suggested to him: “Give up this medicine! I’ll make an actor out of you.” But Zamkov was faithful all his life to his two muses: Mukhina and medicine. For his wife, he was a favorite model (she used him to model Brutus for the Red Stadium) and a household assistant, and he managed to make a revolution in medicine.
Dr. Zamkov came up with a new medicine, Gravidan, that gave amazing results. It was said that those bedridden after an injection of Gravidan began to walk, and the crazy returned to their senses.
But an article appeared in Izvestia in which Zamkov was called a “charlatan.” The doctor could not stand the bullying and decided to flee abroad. Of course, Mukhina went with him.
“We took out some passports and allegedly went south. They wanted to get across the Persian border,” she recalled. - We were arrested in Kharkov and taken back to Moscow. They brought me to the GPU. They interrogated me first. The husband was suspected of wanting to sell the secret of his invention abroad. I said that everything was printed, open and not hidden from anyone.
I was released, and the suffering of my wife, whose husband was arrested, began. This went on for three months. Finally, an investigator came to my home and said that we were being deported for three years with confiscation of property. I cried."
Maxim Gorky helped them get out of Voronezh, which was designated a place of exile. The proletarian writer, along with Vasily Kuibyshev and Clara Zetkin, was one of Dr. Zamkov’s patients and was able to convince the Politburo that a talented doctor needed not just freedom, but also his own institute. The decision was made. True, the equipment for the institute, including the only electron microscope at that time, was purchased with funds received from the rent for the Latvian estate of Vera Mukhina.
Surprisingly, she, despite numerous hints, persuasion and demands, managed to keep her property in Riga. When, after the collapse of the USSR, a law on restitution was adopted in Latvia, the sculptor’s son was even paid a certain amount. But all this will come later.
And in the 30s, Dr. Zamkov’s scientific prosperity did not last long. After Gorky's death, there was no one to stand up for him and the persecution began again. The institute was destroyed, the electron microscope was thrown out of the second floor window. They did not dare arrest Zamkov himself. What saved him was his wife’s name, which was already thundering throughout all the cities and villages of the vast Union.
Vera Ignatievna’s grandfather reached Moscow in 1812 with Napoleon. The granddaughter was destined to conquer Paris in 1937. More precisely, it was ordered. The statue crowning the Soviet pavilion at the World's Fair was intended to dwarf the German pavilion.
Mukhina carried out the order. Her 75-meter "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" soared over Paris, eclipsing not only the Third Reich pavilion, but also the Eiffel Tower.
According to Mukhina's original plan, the figures were supposed to be naked. “Can’t I put them on?” - recommended the management. The sculptor didn’t just dress her characters in a sundress and overalls, she came up with a scarf that seemed to float over the statue. Molotov asked to remove the scarf, but Mukhina stood her ground - he emphasized the movement. Then Voroshilov, walking around the model of the future statue, asked to remove “the bags under the girl’s eyes.”
Shortly before the work of the state commission was handed over, the Central Committee of the Party received a denunciation that Trotsky’s profile could be seen in the folds of the scarf. Stalin personally came to the site and, after inspecting the structure, did not notice any profile. Mukhina's project was approved.
28 sealed special cars went to France. A photograph of Mukhin's statue appeared in the Parisian L'Humanite with the caption that the Eiffel Tower had finally found its completion. Parisians even collected signatures so that Mukhina’s work would remain in France. The French women especially tried - they wanted to have a symbol of the power of women in Paris.
Vera Ignatievna herself did not object. But a decision had already been made to install the statue near the Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow. Several times Mukhina wrote letters of protest, explaining that her work did not look good on the “stump” (as she called the low - three times smaller than the Parisian - pedestal on which the 24-meter statue was installed). She proposed installing “The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman” either on the spit of the Moscow River (where Peter the Great by Tsereteli stands today) or on the observation deck of Moscow State University. But they didn’t listen to her.
Mukhina believed that the installation of “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” at VDNKh was her personal and perhaps the most serious defeat. She generally approached her work in a rather unique way. “I have misfortune,” she said. - As long as I make things, I love them. And then at least they weren’t there..."
Mukhina's character was difficult. Chekist A. Prokofiev, the construction manager of the Palace of the Soviets, noted that he was afraid of only two people in his life - Felix Dzerzhinsky and Vera Mukhina. “When she looked at me with her bright eyes, I had a feeling that she knew all my innermost thoughts and feelings,” the man admitted.
Vera Ignatievna preferred not to argue with the authorities. The only time she tried to convince the Kremlin to change its decision concerned the demolition of the Kazan Cathedral, which stood near the Historical Museum on Red Square. Lazar Kaganovich listened carefully to Mukhina, and then took her to the office window overlooking St. Basil's Cathedral and said: “If you make noise, we will remove this chicken coop too.”
Mukhina didn’t make any more noise. “She had a neutral attitude towards the regime,” the sculptor’s great-grandson Alexei Veselovsky told me. - It seems to me that she was completely outside of this process. Although after the Voronezh exile I understood what was happening in the country. According to family legend, when she was persuaded to sculpt Stalin, she told her family: “I cannot sculpt a man with such a narrow forehead.” When the persuasion became more persistent, she called Molotov: “I cannot sculpt without life. Let Joseph Vissarionovich set a time for me, I’m ready.” Molotov called the Moscow city party committee and said: “Don’t waste time from busy people.” As a result, someone else made the monument.
The sculptor’s son Vsevolod Zamkov wrote in his memoirs: “It is significant that she did not create a single lifetime portrait of members of the Politburo and other members of the party leadership. The only exception is the portrait of People's Commissar of Health Kaminsky, who was soon arrested and executed for refusing to sign a false medical report on the death of Ordzhonikidze. Naturally, she could not avoid participating in competitions for monuments to Lenin. In both cases, her proposals were rejected by the selection committees, who noted the artistic qualities of the models. It is interesting to note that the 1924 portrait was considered “cruel and even evil”, and in the 1950 model (Lenin with a worker holding a rifle and a book) attention was drawn to the fact that the main character is the worker, not Lenin.”
By the way, Mukhina’s posing was considered a good sign. Everyone she sculpted was sure to get a promotion. When Vera Ignatyevna was making a bust of Marshal of Artillery Voronov, he came to the last session with a box of champagne. In response to Vera Ignatievna’s bewildered look, he said that there were rumors among the generals that everyone she blinded received a promotion in rank: “There was no rank higher than mine, marshal, in the artillery, so it must be, I found it in the newspaper today - it was established a new rank of chief marshal of artillery, and I got it!
The family's name was Vera Ignatievna Munya. With her loved ones, she was a completely different person - soft, caring, gentle. “In the dacha photographs,” says Alexey Veselovsky, “she is such a cozy grandmother-grandmother.”
Vera Ignatievna outlived her husband by eleven years. Until the last day, next to the portrait of Alexei Andreevich on her bedside table there was a bouquet of fresh flowers...
Mukhina herself died in September 1953. She undermined her health while working on the monument to Gorky, at the opening of which in November 1952 she was no longer present.
According to her great-grandson, “she died of angina pectoris - a stonecutter’s disease.”
On Novodevichy Cemetery On the grave of Alexei Zamkov and Vera Mukhina there are two marble slabs. “I did everything I could for the people,” the doctor’s words are embossed on one of them. “Me too,” you can read on his wife’s tombstone.
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"In bronze, marble, wood, and steel, images of people of the heroic era are sculpted with a bold and strong chisel - a single image of man and humanity, marked by the unique stamp of great years."
AND
art critic ArkinVera Ignatievna Mukhina was born in Riga on July 1, 1889 into a wealthy family and
received a good education at home.Her mother was Frenchfather was a gifted amateur artistand Vera inherited her interest in art from him.She didn’t have a good relationship with music:Verochkait seemed that her father did not like the way she played, but he encouraged his daughter to take up drawing.Childhood yearsVera Mukhinatook place in Feodosia, where the family was forced to move due to serious illness mother.When Vera was three years old, her mother died of tuberculosis, and her father took her daughter abroad for a year, to Germany. Upon their return, the family settled again in Feodosia. However, a few years later, my father changed his place of residence again: he moved to Kursk.Vera Mukhina - Kursk high school student
In 1904, Vera's father died.
In 1906 Mukhina graduated from high schooland moved to Moscow. UShe no longer had any doubt that she would pursue art.In 1909-1911 Vera was a student at a private studiofamous landscape painterYuona. During these years, he first showed interest in sculpture. In parallel with painting and drawing classes with Yuon and Dudin,Vera Mukhinavisits the studio of the self-taught sculptor Sinitsina, located on Arbat, where for a reasonable fee one could get a place to work, a machine and clay. From Yuon at the end of 1911 Mukhina moved to the studio of the painter Mashkov.At the beginning of 1912 VeraIngatyevnawas visiting relatives on an estate near Smolensk and, while sledding down the mountain, she crashed and disfigured her nose. Home-grown doctors somehow “sewed” the face onto whichFaithI was afraid to look. The uncles sent Verochka to Paris for treatment. She endured several facial plastic surgeries. But his character... He became harsh. It is no coincidence that many colleagues would subsequently dub her as a person of “tough character.” Vera completed her treatment and at the same time studied with famous sculptor Bourdelle, at the same time attended the La Palette Academy, as well as the drawing school, which was led by the famous teacher Colarossi.
In 1914, Vera Mukhina toured Italy and realized that her true calling was sculpture. Returning to Russia at the beginning of the First World War, she created her first significant work - the sculptural group “Pieta”, conceived as a variation on the themes of Renaissance sculptures and a requiem for the dead.
The war radically changed the usual way of life. Vera Ignatievna left sculpture, entered nursing courses, and in 1915-17 worked in a hospital. There
she also met her betrothed:Alexey Andreevich Zamkov worked as a doctor. Vera Mukhina and Alexey Zamkov met in 1914, and got married only four years later. In 1919, he was threatened with execution for participating in the Petrograd rebellion (1918). But, fortunately, he ended up in the Cheka in the office of Menzhinsky (from 1923 he headed the OGPU), whom he helped to leave Russia in 1907. “Eh, Alexey,” Menzhinsky told him, “you were with us in 1905, then you went to the whites. You won’t survive here.”Subsequently, when Vera Ignatievna was asked what attracted her to her future husband, she answered in detail: “He has a very strong creativity. Internal monumentality. And at the same time a lot from the man. Inner rudeness with great spiritual subtlety. Besides, he was very handsome."
Alexey Andreevich Zamkov was indeed a very talented doctor, he treated unconventionally, tried traditional methods. Unlike his wife Vera Ignatievna, he was a sociable, cheerful, sociable person, but at the same time very responsible, with a heightened sense of duty. They say about such husbands: “With him, she’s like behind a stone wall.”
After the October Revolution, Vera Ignatievna became interested in monumental sculpture and made several compositions on revolutionary themes: “Revolution” and “Flame of Revolution”. However, the expressiveness of her modeling, combined with the influence of cubism, was so innovative that few people appreciated these works. Mukhina abruptly changes her field of activity and turns to applied art.
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Mukhinsky vases
Vera Mukhina
is getting closer
I'm with avant-garde artists Popova and Ekster. With themMukhinamakes sketches for several of Tairov's productions at the Chamber Theater and is engaged in industrial design. Vera Ignatievna designed the labelswith Lamanova, book covers, sketches of fabrics and jewelry.At the Paris Exhibition of 1925clothing collection, created according to sketches by Mukhina,was awarded the Grand Prix.
Icarus. 1938
“If we now look back and try once again to survey and compress a decade of Mukhina’s life with cinematic speed,- writes P.K. Suzdalev, - passed after Paris and Italy, then we will face an unusually complex and turbulent period of personality formation and creative search for an extraordinary artist new era, a female artist, formed in the fire of revolution and labor, in an unstoppable striving forward and painfully overcoming the resistance of the old world. A swift and impetuous movement forward into the unknown, despite the forces of resistance, towards the wind and storm - this is the essence of Mukhina’s spiritual life of the past decade, the pathos of her creative nature.
"From drawings-sketches of fantastic fountains (“Female figure with a jug”) and “fiery” costumes to Benelli’s drama “The Dinner of Jokes”, from the extreme dynamism of “Archer” she comes to the projects of monuments to “Liberated Labor” and “Flame of the Revolution”, where this plastic idea acquires sculptural existence, a form, albeit not yet fully found and resolved, but figuratively filled.
This is how “Yulia” is born - named after the ballerina Podgurskaya, who served as a constant reminder of the shapes and proportions of the female body, because Mukhina greatly rethought and transformed the model. “She wasn’t that heavy,” said Mukhina. The refined grace of the ballerina gave way in “Julia” to the strength of deliberately weighted forms. Under the sculptor’s stack and chisel, not just a beautiful woman was born, but a standard of a healthy, harmoniously built body full of energy.Suzdalev: ““Julia,” as Mukhina named her statue, is built in a spiral: all the spherical volumes - head, chest, belly, thighs, calves - everything, growing out of each other, unfolds as the figure is walked around and again twists in a spiral, giving rise to the feeling a whole form of the female body filled with living flesh. Individual volumes and the entire statue resolutely fill the space occupied by it, as if displacing it, elastically pushing away the air. “Julia” is not a ballerina, the power of her elastic, deliberately weighted forms is characteristic of a woman of physical labor; this is the physically mature body of a worker or peasant woman, but with all the heaviness of the forms, there is integrity, harmony and feminine grace in the proportions and movement of the developed figure.”
In 1930, Mukhina’s well-established life suddenly breaks down: her husband, the famous doctor Zamkov, is arrested on false charges. After the trial, he is deported to Voronezh and Mukhina, along with her ten-year-old son, follows her husband. Only after Gorky’s intervention, four years later, did she return to Moscow. Later, Mukhina created a sketch of a tombstone for Peshkov.
Portrait of a son. 1934 Alexey Andreevich Zamkov. 1934
Returning to Moscow, Mukhina again began to design Soviet exhibitions abroad. She creates architectural design Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. Famous sculpture“Worker and Collective Farm Woman,” which became Mukhina’s first monumental project. Mukhina's composition shocked Europe and was recognized as a masterpiece of 20th century art.
V.I. Mukhina among second-year students of Vkhutein
From the late thirties until the end of her life, Mukhina worked primarily as a portrait sculptor. During the war years, she created a gallery of portraits of medal-bearing soldiers, as well as a bust of Academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov (1945), which now adorns his tombstone.
Krylov’s shoulders and head grow from a golden block of elm, as if emerging from the natural growths of a thick tree. In places, the sculptor’s chisel glides over chipped wood, emphasizing their shape. There is a free and relaxed transition from the raw part of the ridge to the smooth plastic lines of the shoulders and the powerful volume of the head. The color of elm gives a special, vibrant warmth and solemn decorativeness to the composition. Krylov's head in this sculpture is clearly associated with images of ancient Russian art, and at the same time, it is the head of an intellectual, a scientist. Old age and physical decline are contrasted with the strength of spirit, the volitional energy of a person who has given his entire life to the service of thought. His life is almost lived - and he has almost completed what he had to do.
Ballerina Marina Semyonova. 1941.
In the half-figure portrait of Semyonova, the ballerina is depicted
in a state of external stillness and internal composurebefore going on stage. In this moment of “getting into character” Mukhina reveals the confidence of an artist who is in the prime of her wonderful talent - a feeling of youth, talent and fullness of feeling.Mukhina refuses to depict the dance movement, believing that the portrait task itself disappears in it.
Partisan.1942
“We know historical examples,” Mukhina spoke at an anti-fascist rally. - We know Joan of Arc, we know the mighty Russian partisan Vasilisa Kozhina. We know Nadezhda Durova... But such a massive, gigantic manifestation of genuine heroism, which we meet among Soviet women in the days of battles against fascism, is significant. Our Soviet woman consciously goes to exploits. I’m not only talking about such women and heroic girls as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Elizaveta Chaikina, Anna Shubenok, Alexandra Martynovna Dreyman - the Mozhai partisan mother who sacrificed her son and her life to her homeland. I’m also talking about thousands of unknown heroines. Isn’t a heroine, for example, any Leningrad housewife who, during the siege of her hometown, gave the last crumb of bread to her husband or brother, or simply to a male neighbor who made shells?”
After the war
Vera Ignatievna Mukhinacarries out two large official orders: creates a monument to Gorky in Moscow and a statue of Tchaikovsky. Both of these works are distinguished by the academic nature of their execution and rather indicate that the artist is deliberately moving away from modern reality.
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Project of the monument to P.I. Tchaikovsky. 1945. On the left is “The Shepherd Boy” - a high relief for the monument.
Vera Ignatievna fulfilled the dream of her youth. figurine
sitting girl, shrunk into a ball, amazes with its plasticity and melodiousness of lines. Slightly raised knees, crossed legs, outstretched arms, arched back, lowered head. A smooth sculpture that somehow subtly echoes the “white ballet” sculpture. In glass it became even more graceful and musical, and acquired completeness.
Seated figurine. Glass. 1947
http://murzim.ru/jenciklopedii/100-velikih-skulpto...479-vera-ignatevna-muhina.html
The only work, besides “The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman,” in which Vera Ignatievna managed to embody and bring to completion her imaginative, collective and symbolic vision of the world, is the tombstone of her close friend and in-law, the great Russian singer Leonid Vitalievich Sobinov. It was originally conceived as a herm depicting the singer in the role of Orpheus. Subsequently, Vera Ignatievna settled on the image of a white swan - not only a symbol of spiritual purity, but more subtly connected with the swan prince from “Lohengrin” and the “swan song” of the great singer. This work was a success: Sobinov’s tombstone is one of the most beautiful monuments in the Moscow Novodevichy Cemetery.
Monument to Sobinov at the Moscow Novodevichy Cemetery
The bulk of Vera Mukhina’s creative discoveries and ideas remained in the stage of sketches, models and drawings, replenishing the rows on the shelves of her studio and causing (albeit extremely rarely) a flow of bitterness
their tears of the powerlessness of the creator and woman.
Vera Mukhina. Portrait of the artist Mikhail Nesterov
“He chose everything himself, the statue, my pose, and point of view. I determined the exact size of the canvas myself. Everything - myself", - said Mukhina. Confessed: “I hate it when they see how I work. I never allowed myself to be photographed in the workshop. But Mikhail Vasilyevich certainly wanted to write me at work. I couldn't
do not give in to his urgent desire.”Boreas
. 1938
Nesterov wrote it while sculpting “Borey”: “I worked continuously while he wrote. Of course, I couldn’t start something new, but I was finalizing... as Mikhail Vasilyevich correctly put it, I started darning.”.
Nesterov wrote willingly and with pleasure. “Something is coming out,” he reported to S.N. Durylin. The portrait he painted is amazing in the beauty of its composition (Borey, jumping off his pedestal, seems to be flying towards the artist), and in the nobility of its color scheme: a dark blue robe, with a white blouse underneath; the subtle warmth of its shade competes with the matte pallor of the plaster, which is further enhanced by the bluish-lilac reflections from the robe playing on it.
In a few years
Before this, Nesterov wrote to Shadra: “She and Shadr are the best and, perhaps, the only real sculptors we have,” he said. “He is more talented and warmer, she is smarter and more skilled.”This is how he tried to show her - smart and skilled. With attentive eyes, as if weighing the figure of Borey, eyebrows drawn together in concentration, sensitive, able to calculate every movement of his hands.Not a work blouse, but neat, even smart clothes - how effectively the bow of the blouse is pinned with a round red brooch. His shadar is much softer, simpler, more frank. Does he care about a suit - he's at work! And yet the portrait went far beyond the framework originally outlined by the master. Nesterov knew this and was glad about it. The portrait does not speak of intelligent skill - it speaks of creative imagination, curbed by will; about passion, holding back
occupied by the mind. About the very essence of the artist’s soul.
It's interesting to compare this portrait with photographs, made with Mukhina during work. Because, even though Vera Ignatievna did not allow photographers into the studio, there are such photographs - Vsevolod took them.
Photo 1949 - working on the figurine “Root in the role of Mercutio”. Closed eyebrows, a transverse fold on the forehead and the same intense gaze as in the portrait of Nesterov. The lips are also pursed slightly questioningly and at the same time decisively.
The same ardent power of touching a figurine, a passionate desire to pour a living soul into it through the trembling of fingers.
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